MAMA really likes S.J.

"I haven't even got my first CD out yet," said the Stockton-based musician.

Nevertheless, Harris and his Groovenators have been nominated for a Modesto Area Music Award (MAMA) as best blues band.

"It's great, man," said Harris, a former drummer who now plays an electric "key-tar." "Initially, I was shocked. It is an honor. Truly an honor. I'm totally humbled. This blows me away. I was, like, wow."

There's plenty of similar enthusiasm being expressed.

Sixteen musicians, bands, venues and events from San Joaquin County have been nominated for the 12th annual MAMAs, which are decided by Internet voting (modestoareamusic.com/vote).

Stockton's Middagh Goodwin - of Beat Happy Productions - was nominated twice: as best rock promoter and for his Plea for Peace Center, which won last year as the region's top venue.

Goodwin, 45, also will receive a Stockton Arts Commission award for "outstanding achievement in business of the arts" on Oct. 20.

For Harris, 62, the nomination already represents a victory of determination and sheer will.

In 2000, after suffering a stroke, "my left side developed weakness." He spent 16 months in a wheelchair. It took five months for Harris - using a cane at first - to regain his ability to walk.

Unable to continue the drumming he'd been doing since 1966, Harris started tinkering around on the piano, which he'd learned to play as an 8-year-old.

Then someone suggested an AX-7 Roland electric keyboard ("keytar").

"You strap it on like a guitar," Harris said, "It was like serendipity. 'You wanna play? Here you go.' "

An Oakland native who's lived in Stockton since 1979, Harris had provided rhythms for blues bands led by Tommy Castro - he was the San Jose bluesman's first drummer - Ron Hacker, Ron Thompson, Johnny Heartsman and Etta James, among others.

"I always say, I played for the best and the worst," he said.

In 2005, he and Modesto's Gary Hamilton, a singer who plays guitar and saxophone, got together as the Groovenators - a "band in search of a permanent rhythm section."

Harris and Hamilton started finding their blues groove during weekly jams at Stockton's Valley Brewing Company. They've been doing shows mostly in Modesto and the Bay Area.

After regaining his mobility, "my kids started haranguing me that I needed to go back to school," Harris said.

He did, earning an AA degree in education at Delta College. Harris now teaches a weekly course (blues band 101) in the community education department and tutors - guitar, drums, rhythm - during Delta's summer "kids' college."

A life-long musician, he never got discouraged.

"Right after, I mean it was really weird," Harris said. "But I don't know if I ever thought I'd never play any more. But it never occurred to me that I'd have a stroke, either.

"I don't know. I never gave up. I figured something's gonna happen. I don't know what. I'd just make baby steps. Baby steps. At the very least, I knew I could write music. Write songs. If I wrote something, I know enough people I might be able to sell it."

A three-person committee selects the MAMA nominees and Harris has no idea why his Groovenators were chosen.

"Maybe it's because I'm that old dude now," he said with a laugh. "There's a pretty cool scene in Modesto. A lot of the younger musicians, they like the old-school stuff. That's what I do."

The band from Long Island, N.Y., now in its 40th year, provides evidence of that in October.

First, the group completes the San Joaquin County trifecta - Lodi Grape Festival (2009), Stockton Asparagus Festival (2010) and San Joaquin County Fair - by playing the fair's main stage tonight.

On Oct. 28, Sony Legacy is releasing "Columbia Albums Collection," a 17-CD career compilation that includes two disc of "rarities." Seven of the albums have been re-mastered. The package includes download codes for four concert films.

That same day, the group stages a 40th-anniversary concert in New York City's Times Square.

It probably won't include "more cowbell," the phrase that attached itself to the band after Christopher Walken coolly and kookily uttered it during an April 8, 2000, skit on "Saturday Night Live."

The band had deployed the cowbell as a rhythm instrument on "(Don't Fear) the Reaper," a top-15 hit from 1976.